The Duke of Sussex was welcomed by Indigenous veterans as he arrived at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra on Wednesday afternoon. Harry is attending a Last Post Ceremony at the memorial, which has been held each evening since 2013 to commemorate an individual serviceperson through storytelling, reflection, and the sounding of the Last Post.
He travelled from Melbourne to Canberra on a commercial Qantas flight, sitting in the front row, to the surprise of cabin crew who looked delighted to have the duke on board.
Following a reinterpretation of legal constraints on the memorial’s scope, the Australian Frontier Wars between Indigenous Australians and mostly British settlers are to be included for the first time as part of a gallery planned to open in 2028. The first conflicts of the Frontier Wars took place several months after the landing of the First Fleet in January 1788, and the last conflicts occurred in the early twentieth century.
The memorial had previously argued that frontier fighting was outside its charter, as it did not involve Australian military forces. This position received criticism from historians, who argued such fighting should be commemorated because it involved large numbers of Indigenous Australians and paramilitary or government-backed colonial forces. In September 2022, the memorial’s outgoing chair, Brendan Nelson, announced it would work towards “a much broader, much deeper depiction and presentation of the violence committed against Indigenous people”.
The Australian War Memorial, opened in 1941, is the nation’s principal memorial to those who have served and died in war, combining a shrine, museum, and archive. It features galleries dedicated to the world wars, with more than 1.4 million Australians serving in the armed forces across both conflicts.
